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How Metaphors Rule Your Life. What is a metaphor?. Bob is a ray of sunshine . Bob is a tortoise. Bob is a ripe banana. (Bruce Fraser’s study). When does a metaphor become an idiom?. Bob is having a whale of a time. Bob is broke. Bob geht mir auf den Keks. .
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What is a metaphor? Bob is a ray of sunshine. Bob is a tortoise. Bob is a ripe banana. (Bruce Fraser’s study)
When does a metaphor become an idiom? Bob is having a whale of a time. Bob is broke. Bob gehtmir auf den Keks.
When do we start to use metaphors? 73% accuracy in identifying and understanding non literal statements from the age of 7 (Kaplan, Winner and Rosenblatt, 1987) Start to create, use and understand metaphors much earlier: Open your eyes. Open the TV. (Rumelhart) Can I go to the toilet please?
How many metaphors can you find in the following passage? Your homework this weekend is to put aside as much time as you can to revise for Monday’s test. I hope I can get across to you how important this is. Imagine that your brains are sponges, soaking up ideas as you study. Some of you have worked hard all term, but some of you really need to literally pull your socks up and realise that hard work now will open doors for you in the future. Imagine yourself ten years from now. How do you want you life to be? Place a clear image of it your mind. Keep this in mind when you feeling like being lazy.
Your homework this weekend is to put aside as much time as you can to revise for Monday’s test. I hope I can get across to you how important this is. Imagine that your brains are sponges, soaking up ideasas you study. Some of you have worked hard all term, but some of you really need to literally pull your socks upand realise that hard work now will open doors for you in the future. Imagine yourself ten years from now. How do you want you life to be? Place a clear image of it your mind. Keep this in mind when you feeling like being lazy.
Your homework this weekend is to put aside as much time as you can to revise for Monday’s test. I hope I can get across to you how important this is. Imagine that your brains are sponges, soaking up ideas as you study. Some of you have worked hard all term, but some of you really need to literally pull your socks up and realise that hard work now will open doors for you in the future. Imagine yourself ten years from now. How do you want you life to be? Place a clear image of it your mind. Keep this in mind when you feeling like being lazy.
How do / should we use metaphor? Logical positivist theory: literal language is most truthful = metaphors are part of rhetoric and have no place in science Relativist theory: language shapes our thinking; most of our ordinary conceptual systemis metaphor = metaphors are how we make sense of the world
(Lakoff) Space, motion and force States are locations Causes are forces Changes are movements
We use what is concrete to understand the abstract “pour out sorrow” “it’s been floating around” “absorb those ideas” “go with the flow” “all in the same boat”
We deal with the abstract in a concrete way Time as a measurable location/space: at 8o’clock um 8 Uhr throughout the year arrive on time looking forward to the holidays put the past behind you
‘conduit metaphor’ (Reddy) ideas = objects words = containers Igave you that idea. The meaning is right there in the words. His words carry little meaning. Your words seem hollow.
happy = up sad = down rational = up emotional = down High- level discussion
Do we use metaphors as a coping mechanism? simultaneous mapping movement from one another realm? lifetime = a day place to another to “pass away”
Does metaphor determine or reflect cultural values? This gadget will save you hours. How do you spend your time? I've invested a lot of time in it. Is that worth your while? He's living on borrowedtime. You don't use your timeprofitably. Thank you for your time. Time = valuable commodity and a limited resource The course of true love never did run smooth. This relationship isn’t going anywhere; we may have to go our separate ways. Lakoff State of love = unexpected, involuntary, dangerous?
Does metaphor determine how we act? Schön: What are the ‘facts’ highlighted in a metaphor? ‘domino effect’; ‘contagious’ out-of-control ‘storm’ military strikes, not bombs (Susan Bakewell, 2013) (Geary, 2011)
create something new / new way of seeing the world enjoyment of puzzle solving (Jerry L. Morgan) reflect our cultural values social etiquette to reveal the ‘truth’ about something (or what we would like the truth to be) there is no literal expression for exactly what we mean Plato: A man cannot enquire either about that which he knows or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.
Bibliography/further reading • Metaphor and Thought, edited Andrew Ortony, 1979. • Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980. • I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World, James Geary, 2011. • ‘With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time’, Rafael E. Núñeza and Eve Sweetser, Cognitive Science 30 (2006), pp.1–49. • ‘How we’re herded by language’, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/06/herded-language-metaphor-war: Susan Bakewell, 2013.
